How to measure the results of a
marketing campaign in our industry?
It is only reasonable that a company that spends a considerable
amount of money for different marketing means such as print
ads, articles, online ads, brochures, videos, exhibitions, new
logo design, mailings and much more, would like to have a clear
answer as far as results are concerned.
Unfortunate there is hardly a qualified feedback to this question. An answer might be possible if one compares marketing campaigns over years and than attempts to draw some kind of conclusion. However, even in that case, who can validate that better results are due to the exhibitions attended, the ads printed, the improved brochures, or simply because a new product has been released? A small, but potentially very misleading exception may be the online activities, counting clicks and visitors. But what people often forget looking at these counts of clicks is that online marketing activities would not have the same results if the company did not do all the other marketing activities. In marketing, everything is connected in one way or the other. Here is an example: A customer calls because he read an article in magazine "X" and is interested in the described product. He may even tell you he only called because of the article. But in reality, the fact may be that he once just passed by your company booth at an exhibition without even asking for information, saw an ad about the product, and a workmate casually mentioned the product once. Finally, he saw the article, and made the decision to call. He indeed does not know that it needed those four encounters to make the decision for the call. Studies show that in many cases a person has to come across a product several times before the decision is made to contact the company or to buy a product. So if there are no qualified answers in terms of marketing results, what is the right approach? 1) Continuity: Regardless of what marketing effort is chosen, there must be continuity. It is highly counter-productive if there are always changes. A company should select their marketing strategy carefully and than maintain it for a year or better two before reflection. If a company invests a big marketing effort for a few months only and then "disappears" again, or changes strategies all the time, this is likely to harm the company's reputation because the customers may draw the wrong conclusion. 2) Diversity and synergies: Try to diverse your budget into exhibitions, online and print ads, articles, mailings and so forth. Use synergies, which means if you have published an article or interview, put it also online. Use the link in mailings or prepare a separate paper print for hand-outs at exhibitions. Or if you have a product video, make sure that it can be seen on YouTube, web home-pages, etc. However, most important is the understanding to look at the results of the whole marketing package, rather than trying to figure out how many sales leads came from the January ad or article of magazine "X".
Best Regards Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.), Chief Editor of MFN, E-mail: andrzej@mfn.li
|